Alyssa Fletcher
Part 1
In the corner of a sparkling white diner, a young couple ate together. The woman sat in a fog of vague discontent, her head of brunette curls sitting perfectly still as she stared out the window at the motor cars humming by. She fantasised about getting up and walking out. She wanted to stand up in a flurry, sip the dregs from her soda and, without a word, walk away from the table and out the door. She wanted to get away—away from the residual excuse-for-a-man that sat in front of her, teeming with indifference at her presence. How did they arrive at this point? When had the togetherness of sharing a meal become as bitter as the steaming espresso that unfailingly concluded every dinner? The two sat in a tense and deafening silence, and she felt solitude would have been a better option.
Unblinking and filled with disgust, she stared at him drinking his coffee. It was the same predictable manner that she could anticipate, down to each minute movement. Take one sip; place the cup down. Stare out the window. Pick up the cup; two sips, three. With a clunk as it misses the edge, return the empty demitasse to its saucer. Swallow. Exhale. Make a gesture in the air, a signal that the waiter seems to understand. Curtain close. She knew the script by heart. Only these days, there was no dialogue: just a dull performance that exhibited no words. Here there was only the presence of two people on a stage, staring vacantly and eating alone, together. She narrowed her eyes and glanced away. I may as well be dining alone, she thought.
It was the same strange ritual each time. While waiting for the bill, she stared into the tiny cup and noticed the espresso forming a stain in a perfect line, running from the china lip all the way to the bottom where it pooled in a grimy black mess. The golden-brown coffee that had once tasted so good was now unsightly, its coarse grinds resting in the base, bitter and cold.
Her mind wandered to times gone by, to the early months of their relationship when every date was a thrill. Every outing was spent absorbed in conversation and each other; the energy between them suspended their bond on a whimsical and timeless plane. They debated with passion over the best type of chocolate. He preferred the creamy richness of plain solid milk chocolate, while she liked hers jet-black and bitter, filled with almonds or flavoured with peppermint. Mornings were spent in bustling coffee shops, jammed like sardines on crowded bar seats, waiting impatiently for breakfast. Meals were presented to a pair of beaming, lustful faces that seemed not only in love with each other, but with everybody in the room. Confused waiters, accustomed to indifference from patrons, were bemused as the young couple greeted each dish with enthusiasm and zeal. But the pair never noticed the chaos surrounding them, only each other. They were young and carefree and moving too fast to notice where they had ended up.
But something went wrong along the way, and the sizzling passion they had rapidly cultivated slowly turned cold and dank as old bathwater. Perhaps they had used up all their energy, for during those first lust-filled months they had heard all the stories and it seemed there was nothing left to say. No new information, no desire to create conversation. Passion gave way to practicality, romance gave way to routine and all at once, it seemed, things had become stagnant. The man now seemed less than enchanted by her presence, and the woman felt abandoned, pining for his undivided attention. She identified within her a vague sense of bitterness. Gradually, that bitterness had transformed into resentment, which eventually became a serious discontent. As she glanced up at the man who she had come to know so quickly, so superficially, she wondered whether she had gotten herself in too deep.
She wanted to stand up, slap him with a sting across the cheek, and scream, ‘I may as well be dining alone!’ But something stopped her. As she touched a hand to her stomach, she felt hesitation and a pang of queasiness induced by the tiny life forming inside of her. She froze, petrified and breathless at the thought of being left alone as a young mother, as her mother had been and countless women before her. Even sitting there with her lover, she already felt distant and alone. Torn with the conflict that ripped her between a painful choice and two inevitably painful outcomes, she unwittingly made a compromise with herself. And she stayed, sitting at the table, feeling alone, as she mused: Well, better to be alone, together.
Part 2
In the corner of a 1950s-style diner, an elderly couple sat in silence, eating slowly. Occasionally they locked eyes in a half-smile that seemed to speak volumes louder than words could communicate. They really were quite old, and had reached the point where talking was made difficult for many reasons, not the least of which was deafness. They were tired but settled. A lifetime spent together had rendered them into a state of simple existence that was not at all bad, just very quiet.
The old man shifted in his seat, finding the chair to be uncomfortable and hard under his aching bones. He glanced at his wife. Her head of curls had turned from brunette, to grey, to white, but she kept the same wild beauty, if a little faded, from her youth. She knew that they both would have been more comfortable at home, in the privacy of their own lounge room, where they had their own lounge chairs, their own television and their own food. They both knew, though, that dining out was something meaningful and important for them to do together.
The two had been married for such a long time that being together was intrinsically natural, each one acting as a quiet counterpart to the other: a limb, a leg, a silent but significant part of life. Each acted as the gentle machinery that kept the other running; it ran quietly in the background, requiring minimal maintenance as it hummed away over the years.
They had done all the talking. They knew all the information. They had done the screaming matches, the crying, the laughing, the jokes. They had done the family life, from that first pregnancy to the fifth bundle of love that entered their world. They’d had the children and pets and neighbours and tennis games. They had done the sing-a-longs, done it all, and done it for decades on end. They had even gotten past the point where the silence came as a relief; it was just the way of life now. There was love, of course, but there was no like or dislike between them. Just existence. Now was the time for quiet.
The food arrived and they politely thanked the waitress, moving in slow motion as the habitual creatures they were. The man watched his wife and smiled. There was no interaction between them, only an occasional piece of banal commentary on the meal or an offer of help reading the menu. Dining had been like this for a long time. There had been moments during their partnership when each one thought they would be better off apart. But as the downfalls of old age began to get more and more difficult, they soon realised that while at times they longed for a life of independence, they needed each other. And they had love. So they made an unspoken compromise, an unwritten promise to keep dining together.
The man sighed and pondered, I may as well be dining alone. In his waning years, he thought back to those moments and realised how detached they had become from each other. One really is quite alone in this world, he thought. Well, it’s better to be alone, together.